I sure hope it is not religious intolerance at work.When I read the story, my first thought was this was vandalism.Who would toss a statue in a river?But I don’t know much about the Hinduism.Does anybody know anything about such a tradition where an icon would be discarded in such a way? What would be the meaning involved with practice?

4 Responses to “Local Hindu statue mystery”

Hi David,
This is interesting. I am aware that one way of breaking a connection with a magically charged object would be to break it up and leave it in running water to carry the force away form you. I suspect the statue was used in a ritual — perhaps even black magic — they don’t say what deity it is — that would reveal a lot. Then it had to be disposed of for the magic to ground in the reality.
It might not even have owned by Indian people. Thelemites use a lot of Hindu workings as do some Carribean Hoodoos.

You make an excellent point, I hadn’t thought about that. Something about this story sounded very fishy to me (no pun intended). It seems very disrespectful for a religious person to dump something of their faith in a river. But to cleanse a charged artifact in running water…that makes sense. There is an old belief that ghosts can’t cross running water. Why? Because running water acts as an etheric eraser, and would remove etheric energies. Interesting. There is a picture of this broken statue on the Tribune website, I don’t know how long they will keep that story available. Maybe someone will know what the deity is?

Arlene, thanks for the insight. We might be a step closer to figuring this out.

Look at the image at the bottom of this page, the one where Durga is on the tiger: one foot facing the front, and (one of the) right hands is palm forward in blessing… omg is it actually sitting on a tiger?!) … I would guess the headless statue is that of Durga.

The one behind her, I can’t see anything that would identify her – I can only say it’s not Kali, since she is usually depicted with her tongue out.

Something else to consider: it is currently the time of Navaratri, which is a worship of the Goddess in the form of Durga’s nine aspects, carried out over nine nights. As far as I know (which isn’t far at all), I don’t think worship includes tossing statues into water… in that case, this might very well be willful disrespect for the deities that should be receiving worship during this time.

Hi Lynne,
Thanks for the insight. One of the statues is Durga, that is a great clue. I’ll have to do some research about Durga. Why anybody would toss a statue of Durga in a river? This feels like a Dan Brown mystery. Where is Robert Langdon when you need him! This is a ritual of some sort. Another clue…it is under a bridge. A head is broken off. Where did this statue come from? Who made it? A real mystery.
Dave